"Your Silence Will Not Protect You" ~ Audre Lorde

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Care.

Lt. Dan Choi drilled this weekend with his National Guard unit. Nothing remarkable about a soldier serving with his unit. Happens all the time. What makes Choi special is he became an activist for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT),” the 17-year-old policy which has led to the forced separation of over 13,000 soldiers.

President Obama called for the repeal of DADT during his State of the Union address and Secretary of the Defense Robert Gates testified in Congressional hearings that it was time for the policy to be ended and homosexuals be allowed to serve in the armed forces.

As if they haven’t already?

In my own military service I recall two guys who got caught screwing each other and the military police marching them out of the barracks. I never found out what happened to them but I had a pretty good guess. They probably got grilled by the base commander for information on other homosexuals lurking among us, given a general, administrative or bad conduct discharge and booted out with no possibility of collecting any G.I. Bill benefits no matter how good of a job they did before they got caught.

Everyone that has served in the military has served with gay men and women. You went through basic training with them. You ate with them. You slept in the same barracks with them. You showered, shit and shaved with them. You pounded beers with them and bummed smokes off of them. You told your bad homo jokes and they laughed at them even when they didn’t want to.

A flamboyant heterosexual who’s grabbing every woman’s ass within reach and bragging about how much pussy he gets and chicks he’s banged, bugs me just as much as a flamboyant homosexual. Maybe more.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado) wrote an essay on The Huffington Post calling DADT a “discriminatory” policy that needs to be ended.

“… more than 400 service members were discharged from our armed services last year for no reason other than their sexual orientation. As we fight in two wars, it’s counter-productive, dangerous, and expensive to discharge men and women who have critical skills we need to win those wars, just because they’re gay,” Udall said.

Gay men like Lt. Dan Choi volunteered to serve their country and if necessary, lay down his life to protect it. Why should what he does behind closed doors as an consenting adult be a reason to kick him out. Anyone who thinks DADT is such a great idea but never wore the uniform and saluted the flag really needs to shut up instead of criticizing someone who has the courage they lack.

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2 thoughts on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Care.”

As a ex military person and a American I firmly believe everyone has the right to join the military if they want. We all have the right to fight for our country and beliefs. I will say however that we also have the right not to take showers with members of the same sex and taking a shower with a gay person is like having someone of opposite sex with you. Basic training requires groups of persons from 10- 20 to take communal showers. A lot of military bases also have same type of bathrooms. The answer is to create bathrooms for gays and in most land bases there is the ability to have the room for that. However some bases and all ships are too small for that answer. What the end answer is I don’t know but for the sake of everyone I hope it gets worked out in the favor of gays being allowed to fully enter all areas of the military.

I’m also ex-military and still an American and we are in agreement everyone who wants to defend and serve our country should be able to. But I don’t know how you can segregate gays and lesbians into separate bathrooms without treating them as different from other soldiers and creating a brand new morale isssue. I took those communal showers too and I’d be a liar if I said I enjoyed it. Maybe it’s different for women, but watching a bunch of other guys scrubbing up is NOT a turn-on.

I would think if were an issue of an unwanted advance or inappropriate remark being made, it should be handled as an case of sexual harassment and allow military justice to address the problem. Segregation is not the solution.